The Thinking Minority

I often wonder if I'm a perpetrator of the things that I hate most about our society today.

For instance, if I'm sitting in a restaurant where others are eating, do I talk on my cell phone? Yes, sometimes I do. However, I don't have the feature that allows my phone to become a walkie-talkie. I wonder if the people that have those phones realize that the only excusable reason you should be on a walkie-talkie in a restaurant is if you're a public safety officer of some sort. If not, you should probably turn the phone off, call the person using the old-school cellular phone feature, or go outside. I still don't want to hear your walkie-talkie conversation. I'll avoid talking about people that talk on the phone check-out lines. You people are so rude that stores had to make signs to let you know that you're rude.

So...I'm what you might call a passive-aggressive driver. OK, I'm actually just an aggressive driver. I'm not one of those people that goes through and passes every single car I possibly can just to get to the next light (gotta love the traffic planning in Charlottesville). I just like to get where I'm going in a timely fashion and I wish that others were as comfortable and proficient at driving their vehicles to feel the same.

Lately I've noticed what must be a complete paradigm shift in traffic engineering. Red lights have come to mean "caution" and yellow lights mean "you should use caution soon...but not just yet...when you're ready to stop...it's red...but you've got some time...oh just run it." What's my point? Only a certain percentage of us have gotten wind of this shift. Some of us still don't believe it to be true. In fact, I'm fairly certain that if I were to try this out for myself, I'd find a blue light special waiting for me at the other side of the intersection. Even worse, someone that is annoyed as I am by this type of activity could just pull off and T-bone me - and it would be my fault.

Even if I don't like when lights turn red, and they always turn red when I get to them, they do serve a purpose (much like a language). Imagine if pilots just stopped listening to air traffic controllers.

Whta Should I Consider for College Loan?
By ELLEN SIMON



Huh?

There once was a man in court
Who thought that his crime was a sport
He ran out a bar
He shot up a car
While chugging a bottle of port

He then met the man from Nantucket
Didn't like him, so told him go fuck it
He punched in his face
He ransacked his place
And stuck his head inside a bucket.......of pee!

He started to run up the road
He slipped when he stepped on a toad
He fell on his head
He thought he was dead
The ground just knocked him out cold

The cops, you know, they got him
The threw him in jail in Gotham
He cried and he cried
'Cause Butch never tired
And now he's a red sore bottom

This story does have motivation
'Cause crime will ruin a nation
If you ever get got
Just blow lots of snot
And who knows? You might get probation

I now put my pen to rest
The Chicago Bulls are the best
The won't win the season
For one simple reason
Winning. They do detest.

Thank you! I miss blogging.

This is a convoluted chain, but bear with me: An organization calling itself "Family Security Matters" published an article by Phillip Atkinson which advocated the idea of a "President-for-life" George W. Bush and descried Democracy as a failure. This article was later removed from the FSM site, but is accessible via Google cache (search: "president for life bush site:familysecuritymatters.org"). A provocative argument in the article is that, according to the author, the US should have used nuclear bombing to either beat the Iraqi populace into submission or erase them from the planet, whichever came first. It's hard to believe that any article this far over the top is serious, and yet there's no evidence of satire at all.

Phillip Atkinson is a British high-school drop-out now living in Australia. He has self-published a so-called "theory of civilization" called "A Study of Our Decline." From what I can tell, it is only available on the Internet (http://www.ourcivilisation.com/inspire.htm).

OK, so far, just some nut job on the Internet. Nothing new there.

BUT, who is FSM?
According to this blog post, FSM is a front-organization for the "Center for Security Policy," whose board of advisors is now called the "National Security Advisory Council." Sound familiar? You might recall that an early member of that group was ... Vice President Dick Cheney.

So, to sum up: an organization with ties to the White House is advocating the overthrow of the Constitution and mass genocide in the Middle-East.

As if things could get any worse for Florida State Representative Bob Allen, who was arrested for offering an undercover police officer a blowjob and $20 (is that the going rate?), I must bring you this news:

State Rep. Bob Allen told police he was just playing along when a undercover officer suggested in a public restroom that the legislator give him oral sex and $20 because he was intimidated, according to a taped statement and other documents released Thursday.

So, next time you're feeling racist and surrounded, consider offering illicit oral sex and money in exchange for your own personal safety. Hey, it works for Florida politicians.